Even though the E3 games industry convention is still days away, it would appear that one of Sony’s secrets is out of the bag: The Sony PSP Go! was spotted in an obviously slipped episode of Qore, a subscription based online entertainment magazine program available through the Playstation Network.
Details leaked
Sony’s new PSP, called the PSP Go! was spotted in the latest episode of Qore (Full video here, it would appear the video was not to go live this early), where presenter Veronica Belmont had a play with the new device.
The PSP Go! has a slide-out bottom part that reveals the usual D-pad and Start/Select buttons etc hidden behind the 3.8″ screen. It features built-in bluetooth, and Sony Memory Stick Micro slot and 16GB of built-in memory. A feature that some were expecting to be dropped earlier than only now, is the UMD drive; the Go! is much thinner due to the UMD drive no longer being there, which is no big deal as the UMD format is being phased out, and with the Go! fully interfacing with the Playstation Network and the PS3, getting movies and games onto the new handheld console is taken care of, not to mention earlier rumours of a games rental system and a music store.
With the dropping of the UMD drive and some other technological advances, the new PSP Go! is over 40% lighter than its predecessor, and with a 3.8″ screen, the screen real-estate is slightly smaller than its predecessor too.
If all goes well, the PSP Go! will ship in at least the US in the third quarter of this year, hopefully making its way to South African shores soon after that.
New games incoming too
And if that wasn’t good enough news, some games were mentioned in the video as well. New games we can look forward to on the PSP includes a new Metal Gear Solid, Little Big Planet and a new Gran Turismo game.
SCEA Director of Hardware John Koller was the one giving the demo of the new Go! in the Qore video, and he explained that the Go! is not out to replace the PSP-3000, but due to Sony’s 10 year shelf life plan for their hardware, the Go! will hang around a little bit longer. He also explained that the two consoles will not have two separate games libraries, but there are likely to be some changes from developers where they create smaller, and thus likely shorter games to ease on the distribution of the games.
See the Engadget PSP Go! picture gallery.
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